The Pakistani Society..
Zacahry latif in his blog today..( for those where blog is slow)
Having been shorn from Pakistan for the past three years I decided that I would reconnect with my country by attend the meetings of the Pakistani society. In my usual fashion I promptly brushed aside the arguments of my brothers and Indians friends who stated that these meetings were nothing more than a front for Islamic fundamentalists. Indeed in my show of bi-partisan cooperation towards a peaceful sub-continent I invited two of my Indian friends to join however both quietly yet firmly refused my offer.
Meandering along I visited the Lecture Hall and was intrigued to see the topic, “Is Democracy the solution to Pakistan’s Woes”. I was awed by the professionalism since the word “woe” must mean that they are going to conduct a deep introspection into the nature of Pakistani society. Even more surprising the lecture began only twenty minutes after schedule, a record for Pakistanis since our vocabulary does not have words for “punctuality”, “efficiency” and “organization”.
Of course I was slightly suspicious of the beards in the room, some of which were longer than Rumpenzel’s hair. Indeed the gender ratio was heavily tilted against the fairer sex, with only a single girl (fully veiled) who isolated herself from the rest of the audience by seating herself in the last row. Though I also reserved a seat for myself in the back of the room I could hear that the drift of the conversation was overtly religious. There was a particularly amusing instance when someone analogized the state of human kind to that of a mobile phone and sanctimoniously stated that just as a mobile phone could only be repaired by its maker so to humans could only be made whole again by their Creator. Of course during his rhetoric I was wondering how microscopic unicellular prokaryotic organisms could actually restore the ruined continent of Africa or strengthen the fragile European Union.
In any case these latent doubts culminated into outright hostility the second the speaker ascended to the podium. He began to pray (which was rather asinine since this was a Pakistani gathering not an Islamic one) and what was hilarious was during this sanctified ritual he was stumbling throughout (despite the fact that I am not a Muslim I at least know the words to the namaz or the qui-daily Islamic prayer) and had to actually ask the mediator for the correct pronunciations & syntax.
He began his speech with a harangue against the internal dynamics of Pakistan which I accepted with perfect ease since it is our national trait to incessantly whine about the state of affairs in the land of the pure. From there he launched onto a categorical rejection of President Musharraf and of our democratic parties. Affirming his arguments with selected statistics and quotes he portrayed a Pakistan under Musharraf that was deigning to the will of the United States and steadily losing all aspects of independent sovereignty. Despite my deep disagreements with this sort of flimsy reasoning* I decided that I would restrain my rousing ire by amusing myself with a good old-fashioned game of tetris on my mobile phone. Thus for a good part of the speech I shut myself off and barely listened apart from a few interesting statements about the Pakistani economic situation**.
Finally he reached to his conclusion, where he declared democracy a failure and all systems of government incomplete because they stem from the law of man. Ipso facto the only valid system of governance was the Islamic Shariah since it stemmed from the divine. Naturally of course I felt the instinctive need to refer him to the notes of the Arab Trilogy Part 2 where I discussed the practicality of the Shariahas a legal system in-depth.
The ultimate flaw in his reasoning is that his theories & ideas presuppose an instinctive belief in Islam (rather his correct path of Islam) and disregards the plurality of thought that characterizes human beings. I personally know the unity Muslims have for though they may continually cry for Palestine, when with one another they will tear each other apart over minor doctrinal schisms. When I was in Pakistan a few years ago we were into the month of Ramadan, which is a period for fasting and repentance. After they broke their fasts Muslims were meant to go the Mosque and listen to the cleric recite the verses of the Holy Quran (this ritual is known as Tarevi). In fact that cleric must finish reciting the entire Holy Quran within the thirty days of fasting. In any case all the children (male that is) in our neighborhood would obediently go to the local mosque down our street whilst my heretical brothers and I equally dutifully abstained***. Nevertheless the children would come to play cricket at our house after Tarevi and it was there that one day I asked the fatal question, “How many verses were meant to be recited at the Tarevi?” Immediately discord broke out amongst twelve year old boys disagreeing on the number of verses and during the course of their argument these mini-scholars recited a long list of references from Al-Bukhari to their prominent muftis to back up their arguments. In retrospect I wonder that these very children, all of whom were Sunnis belonging to the Hanafite branch of Pakistani Islam who went to same mosque each day and listened to the very same cleric, were unable to even agree on the simplest of issues yet according to Islamists Muslims were meant to obey to the will of an Islamic theocracy, which would regulate every aspects of their lif .
A funnier instance of Islamic disunity is before fasting starts when the new moon must be sighted. For such an arcane ritual the glaring rivalries between the Islamic sects**** are revealed with Muslims fervently disagreeing on which calendar to follow and when to begin their fasts (also they start arguing over whether the moon has actually be sighted).
In any case returning to my original narrative the speaker yielded the floor top questions and my brother asked the first, which dealt with the intricacies of Pakistan’s economy. The second was that of strange gentlemen with a thick Pakistani accent claiming that the speaker was wrong in that the problems of Pakistan was not with our autocratic system but rather with the very nature of our nation (in his own words we were not a secular state nor a theocratic one rather in a continual state of limbo). According to him the “Punjabi military industrial complex” artificially held the nation and was responsible for the misery of more Muslims than either Israel or India. Naturally whilst Islamists tend not to be nationalistic (as could be seen by the conference itself, an ostensibly “Pakistani” event hijacked by Muslim loonies) it was blatantly obvious that even the speaker had grown tired of this peculiar gentleman, who had such an obvious distaste for Pakistan.
Finally I asked a question and what a question! If there is one thing I am good at it is being controversial and I made sure that every single of those loonies would remember me for the rest of their lives. I don’t remember the exact phrasing of my question, thus I cannot reproduce it here, but I do remember that I stated something along the lines of “retrograde Islam dictatorship Shariah totalitarianism Hadith inconsistency Muslim irrationality Western civilization beacon of light emulation of America required for progress”. When I had completed my rather long exchange with the speaker every Pakistani face had gone beet red at my words and I believed that when I called the Taliban “a bunch of opium-induced fanatics” and Osama Bin Laden “a raving loony” everyone immediately turned back to see who I was. I also highlighted the obvious argument that if Islamic Civilisation is indeed so great why are we all studying at a British university and conversing in a "Western" rather than an "Islamic" language.
The speaker challenged me that since I considered America to be such a “beacon of light” how come Afghanistan has remained neglected since its invasion. Whilst I rebutted this question with ease (I stated that the collapse of the Taliban allowed a reversion to freedom, albeit laced with anarchism, for all Afghans) a niggling doubt within my mind was created about whether America’s attack of Afghanistan actually ensued in tangible material development or were the peripheral regions merely left to the local warlords. In any case I had decidedly won the argument when the mediator stopped me in my tracks (no surprise his beard was longer than that of Osama’s) and directed questions elsewhere. After a few more questions, including another one by the peculiar gentleman who was protesting the Punjabi establishment, the mediator announced that only two more questions could be asked further. Thereupon a young Muslim gentleman felt “that his obligation as a Muslim made it incumbent upon him to comment over what he heard in the recent exchange”. In direct reference to my previous statements he replied that my epithet to America as the “beacon of light” was inherently flawed since I was measuring its greatness in terms of technology. He further went on to state that by my standard of values then even Hitler’s Germany could be considered a great state since it was materially advanced. He made an even greater leap of logic with his following statement, Wait for it…….. “even non-Muslims would consider Hitler’s Germany to be an Evil Empire”. Even non-Muslims! Of course I agree that a mere non-Muslim cannot aspire to the height of Muslim morality since sniping in Maryland, hijacking in Moscow and bombing in Bali requires a highly attenuated spiritual morality that is innate only to Muslims. When he finally finished his harangue I was about to remind him of the historical facts of World War 2 (I don’t remember Muslims brigades capturing Hitler’s bunker rather it was those led by the “kuffars*****”, the endearing and operative term used by the audience and speaker to denote non-Muslims) when the mediator cried out “that is the end of questioning”. Very well knowing that he had deliberately closed the session to prevent me from launching into a comprehensive rebuttal (only one question had been asked and there was time for another) I took his consternation as a moral victory.
Following the session my brother and I hung around to talk to the audience to find out that between them they had not lived in Pakistan for more than two years and that the speaker himself had only resided in Lahore for five years. My brother and I instinctively knew that this would be the case since Pakistanis are not fanatically inclined like our Diasporic cousins. Those of us who hail from the mainland tend to be much more well-rounded (there is a term reserved for those of us who were raised in Pakistan, “freshies” to imply that we’re fresh off the boat in a foreign land) as well as far more secular and amenable to alcohol (in Pakistan for a party to qualify for its appellation it must have hard liquor). As to that young man who took the trouble of “rebutting” my arguments by analogizing present-day America with Hitler’s Germany when asked as to his national origins, his reply was “oh I’m sorry I have no connection with Pakistan. I’m from India.”
*I fail to see the drawback of Pakistan yielding its effective sovereignty to America since it would strengthen our symbiotic relationship with the States, which has been a perennial feature since 1954.
**His economic facts about the reality of Pakistan were deeply mistaken. Pakistan’s textile industry may not have thrived post September 11 nevertheless the foreign trade, investment and aid has greatly strengthened our nation’s economy. Fortune magazine recently affirmed my oft repeated statement about the Karachi Stock Exchange being the best performing index for the past year. Indeed Musharraf’s privatization program is continuing apace, which will undoubtedly strengthen the utility sector. Anyhow the practice of low till agriculture, which is promising to augur a new age in the Sub-continent, is proliferating throughout the Punjab. Whilst I am not going to lapse into a detailed economic treatise I will state though that Pakistan making a “loss” of 2billion dollars and a loan of 37 billion dollars does not negate its economic progress for all nations are leveraged to a certain extent.
*** Our family were renowned as the local cynics and I can recount fond memories when our neighbors would try to lead us to the true path. Of course one neighbor was particularly insistent on our reintegration to the fold however her noble efforts waned when it was fond out I have the irritable tendency of bursting out into laughter during the Muslim prayer.
****Even in London my Muslims friends would query as to which system I was following, the Sunni or the Shi’ite, and in typical fashion I dissimulated telling the partisans of each sect that I followed their way knowing full well I wouldn’t be exposed because in the sake of “friendship” Sunnis and Shi’ite when together never discuss religious issues .
*****These people could not even pronounce the word Kaffir, which is used to denote apostates and infidels, properly instead using a rough approximation of it, "Kuffar". As for information on this Islamic organisation, I believe it is called "Hizboullah Tareer" and seeks for an ring of theocracies throughout the Islamic Crescent.
Zachary Latif 14:39 |
